About me

I have lived in Japan for 37 years and currently live with my husband and 5 cats. My two children are living and working in the States. I have been a quilter for over 20 years but I am semi-retired and teach English occasionally. I love the Bible and Jesus and try to serve as I can to His glory

Quilting profile

I'm a self-taught quilter who for the past 20 years has progressed through trial and error mostly using Japanese books. I belong to a small group of quilters and we yearly make a bazaar quilt but on my own I dabble in hand piecing and strip piecing and hand quilting. Since joining the blogging world I've enjoyed Wonky piecing and am trying to get a handle on machine quilting using a domestic machine.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Cat's paw

In Japanese, there is a saying

"neko no te mo karitai hodo isogashii".

Translated literally it says

"I am so busy that I want to ask the cat to lend me a paw."

I guess I am busy, though I'm actually not getting much done. Certainly I'm not getting housecleaning done, just can't get excited for that. Tetsu is a pretty good house cleaner and when I'm in the States he takes care of things fairly well. This year a neighbor is coming in daily for a week to take care of the cats so I have to do some surface cleaning at least before I leave.

Velvet has obviously decided that I need a hand and when I went into the bathroom I found my wind breaker halfway in the cat box. Vel keeps after us if we leave socks or towels on the floor and I'll often find articles of clothing inside the box (wet...hmmm.) Not too picturesque what with droppings and socks mingling in the sand but I thought the wind breaker was nicely arranged and it made an acceptable picture.

Good kitty! Velvet is lending me a paw and doing his part by picking up after me!

What I meant to say is do your cats hide when they know you are going away? Even if we are going shopping, Magic sits inside the garage waiting for us to come home. Sometimes when we have stayed overnight with friends she is still there when we get back the next day. I don't know about helpful though, more of a hinderence.